Jeremiah’s Song Release Party

Jeremiah is a 19 year old Kenner student and Amigos Program participant who has a condition known as Batten Disease.  As a result he has limited vision, mobility, speech, and has experienced cognitive impairment.

When Jeremiah was a student in Brent Butler’s class at Kenner High School,  Brent would sing “Joy to the World”, specifically the line “Jeremiah was a bullfrog”,  to him and he didn’t like it at all.  As a joke Brent sang “Jeremiah’s Ralph the turkey” instead and he loved. It.  One of Brent’s educational assistants wrote a few verses particular to Jeremiah to go along with it, and Brent would sing Jeremiah’s Ralph the Turkey to Jeremiah whenever he needed cheering up,  and on a regular basis as well.

Last year Jeremiah took a turn for the worse and missed a fair amount of school.  Brent got the idea to record the song for Jeremiah so he could listen to it at home. Brent connected with former Kenner students, Riley Farmer and Mike Landry who own Echo Studios, and presented the idea of recording the song to them.  They were excited about the idea and donated much of their time and the use of their studio for the recording of the song.  Many others contributed to the making of the song including Mike’s dad, Mike Sr. who played the bass, Denise Ferguson who played the keyboard, and three of Mike Sr.’s co-workers from PRHC who sang background vocals.                                                                                                                                                               

On Monday December 12, 2016 Heads Up for Inclusion, Brent Butler, the Amigos at KCVI and Echo Studios hosted a song release event to celebrate Jeremiah, and to bring awareness to Batten Disease. What a great time!